May, 2015Archive

TECHCRUNCH: While remittances open the door for growth, that possibility pales in comparison to the larger opportunity for Facebook — offering a way for people who don’t use banks now to do e-commerce. According to McKinsey, there are 2.5 billion people globally who do not use formal banks or finance institutions. Their economies are almost entirely cash-based and suffer from the chicken-and-egg problem: Since no one is willing to convert cash into digital form, there is no incentive for merchants to accept electronic payments. With nothing to sustain a system of electronic money, the cycle continues. (more…)

DEALSTREETASIA: Singapore-state fund Temasek-owned Fullerton India Credit Co. Ltd, a non-banking financial company is planning to establish a home finance company in India, a report said. Buoyed by recent success in retail lending, Fullerton aims at granting loans to people in the affordable housing segment, according to a report in Indian publication Mint, which quoted Shantanu Mitra, the firm’s managing director and chief executive (more…)

REUTERS: Airbus Group announced the creation of a $150 million venture capital fund and said it had hired a Google executive to run a new center in Silicon Valley as it seeks to wave a digital wand over its heavy-manufacturing culture.

TECHINASIA: Singapore-based TradeHero today announced it has partnered with the Singapore Exchange (SGX) to organize the StockWhiz 2015 contest. This year’s iteration picks up from the success of last year’s contest, which according to the company drew over 15,000 people to join in. Participants this time around will be able to trade in more than 400 stocks, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and exchange traded funds (ETFs) in real-time, based on information listed on SGX. (more…)

TECHCRUNCH: At its I/O developer conference today, Google announced Android Pay, a new payments solution native to its mobile operating system. In addition to making it easier to pay at a merchant’s point of sale via NFC, the new system lets merchants integrate payments directly into their apps for selling physical goods and services using an Android Pay API rather than integrating a third-party provider like Venmo or PayPal. (more…)

The Economist: Paying for a taxi ride using your mobile phone is easier in Nairobi than it is in New York, thanks to Kenya’s world-leading mobile-money system, M-PESA. Launched in 2007 by Safaricom, the country’s largest mobile-network operator, it is now used by over 17m Kenyans, equivalent to more than two-thirds of the adult population; around 25% of the country’s gross national product flows through it. M-PESA lets people transfer cash using their phones, and is by far the most successful scheme of its type on earth. Why does Kenya lead the world in mobile money? (more…)

The Finanser: I just visited with Roberto Ferrari at CheBanca! in Italy. For those who don’t know CheBanca!, it is the digital first bank launched in 2008 by Mediobanca. Mediobanca provides merchant bank services in Italy and had never had a retail bank before. Therefore, it made sense in the post-meltdown digital age to implement a fintech bank fit for Italy, and CheBanca! claims to be that bank. (more…)

DEALSTREETASIA: Singapore-based crowdfunding platforms CoAssets, FundedByMeand New Union have established a tripartite alliance to grow crowdfunding in Southeast Asia. Combined, the three companies have facilitated raising of S$200 million ($148.17 million dollars) through international campaigns, to date. They plan to accelerate this growth in the coming months, despite the relative youth of the industry in the region. (more…)

REUTERS: China‘s banking regulator has given a green light to MYbank, the online bank affiliated with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, to start operating. The bank, owned in part by Alibaba-linked Ant Financial, is expected to launch in June as China’s internet companies increasingly encroach upon the turf of traditional banks. (more…)

TECHCRUNCH: Another London-headquartered fintech startup, albeit one with a development and marketing team in Spain, has raised more capital of its own. This time it’s the turn of Kantox. The currency exchange marketplace for SMEs right up to ‘mid cap’ companies has raised $11 million in Series B funding. (more…)

The Economist: Paying for a taxi ride using your mobile phone is easier in Nairobi than it is in New York, thanks to Kenya’s world-leading mobile-money system, M-PESA. Launched in 2007 by Safaricom, the country’s largest mobile-network operator, it is now used by over 17m Kenyans, equivalent to more than two-thirds of the adult population; around 25% of the country’s gross national product flows through it. M-PESA lets people transfer cash using their phones, and is by far the most successful scheme of its type on earth. Why does Kenya lead the world in mobile money? (more…)

TECHINASIA: Since Myanmar opened up its economy in 2010, after one of the most brutal dictatorships in Asia, capitalism has been on the rise. The country’s abundant natural resources, strategic location between Asia’s powers India and China, and its largely untapped market of 60 million people have caught the interest of foreign investors. (more…)

TECHCRUNCH: We already knew that GoCardless co-founder Tom Blomfield was working on a new U.K. banking startup, but now, thanks in part to a noisy series of Tweets from investors, developers and the company’s own Twitter account, more details have emerged. Dubbed Mondo, the startup is described as a “full stack” and mobile-first bank, in reference to the fact that it isn’t simply a mobile app piggybacking existing banking software or an existing bank in order to offer a better User Experience. Instead, my understanding is that the company’s plans and accompanying technology is considerably more ambitious. (more…)

TECHCRUNCH: Turkey’s Iyzico, which provides a platform to let e-commerce sites and other apps easily accept online payments, has raised a $6.2 million Series B. Leading the round is International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s investing arm, while Istanbul-based VC 212, Endeavor Catalyst, and Austria’s Speedinvest also participated. The startup has now raised $9.4 million in total since it was founded in 2012. (more…)

TECHCRUNCH: The anxiety hasn’t worn off yet. I’ve used the Stratos credit card for three weeks now and I’m still unsure if it will work for every transaction. It makes me nervous. That’s a problem for a device that promises to consolidate credit cards. For now, until the anxiety subsides, I’m carrying the Stratos card and all of my plastic cards and that defeats the point. (more…)

TECHCRUNCH: Bitcoin’s most disrupting feature is its decentralized architecture. Indeed, bitcoin relies on a P2P network of computers to proceed money transfers. Each part of the network works to create new bitcoins (‘mining’), keep the network alive and validate transactions. All the transactions are registered in the blockchain that is used to validate a transaction using cryptography technology: it ensures that you can’t use a bitcoin you don’t own or you don’t use the same bitcoin more than once. This last action previously required a third party, but with bitcoin this is not the case anymore: the network replaces financial institutions and banks. (more…)

DEALSTREETASIA: Vietnam-based Coc Coc has become the second most popular search engine in Vietnam, after Chrome. Three months after it received the $14 million funding from Hubert Burda Media in February this year, the ad sales have jumped two times, while the subscription for Coc Coc search has increased by 32 per cent. This was revealed by the company’s co-founder Le Van Thanh at the FPT Techday in Hanoi last week. Coc Coc was founded in 2007, inspired by Russia’s Yandex, but its products were commercialised during the last three years, since 2013. (more…)

TECHINASIA: If you had asked anyone in the region about fintech just a couple of years ago, you would have been met with blank stares – and not the eyes-glazing-over kind that some people get when someone mentions finance. Today, it’s the fancy, shiny sports car that just pulled up in the town square; it’s all everyone seems to be talking about, and they’re all wondering if they can hitch a ride. (more…)

Forbes: “Level is dedicated to rewriting the financial rulebook to create a secure future for the next generation.” That’s budgeting app Level Money’s stated mission, which can be found on their website’s “About Us” page. But even as lofty as that objective sounds, co-founder and CEO Jake Fuentes says the company’s sights are set even higher. (more…)

Business Insider: Banks have historically handled most consumer and small business lending because they have the resources to assess a borrower’s creditworthiness, and the regulatory approval to fund loans. However, this model has some key inefficiencies – interest rates are not individualized, the costs of underwriting loans are high, loan decisions can take months, and small businesses in particular have been shut out of the process. (more…)

TECHINASIA: Recently landed in Singapore, Russian venture capitalLife.Sreda today announced it has hired Huawei’s former global head of operations and COO of cloud business Victor Chow as CEO of its InspirAsia startupaccelerator. From his new position, he will be overseeing accelerator development and the launch of the acceleration program. (more…)

TECHCRUNCH: Digital commerce company PayPal is moving to establish itself as “more than just a button” to a global payments platform as it readies a split from parent company eBay later this year. “We’re coming into the market at a time when the financial services industry is going through some fundamental shifts,” new PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said at PayPal’s Commerce: Rewind event today. “We’re really thinking how do we re-imagine PayPal almost as a service. PayPal as a SaaS platform.” (more…)

WIRED: Cashless payment has overtaken hard cash for the first time. The UK Payments Council reports that 52 percent of transactions were made with notes and coins in 2014, but says it believes the figure will fall below 50 percent for 2015. (more…)

TECHINASIA: Tumblbug, a South Korean crowdfunding platform for the creative arts, announced today it has raised KRW 17 billion (just over US$15.5 million) in series A investment, according to BeSUCCESS. The funding comes from DCM, Strong Ventures, and Naver, the maker of messaging app Line. (more…)